Tuesday, June 09, 2015

Mapping America's Segregated Cities

Jim Vallandingham has created a number of force-directed maps to powerfully visualize segregation in U.S. cities. In each of the maps the most segregated neighborhoods are animated as they push away from other neighborhoods, based on the differences in proportion of the white and black populations in each neighborhood census tract.

Visualizing The Racial Divide includes maps for 13 American cities, including St Louis, Chicago and Baltimore. Select the button for one of the city maps and the areas with the most segregated populations push away from the neighboring areas, while areas of homogeneity stay largely static. As the most segregated neighborhoods move further away from the less segregated areas spaces appear on the map where there is a significant change in the racial makeup between neighboring census tracts. The space is proportional to the change in racial composition between neighborhoods.

The data is based on the 2010 census and the visualization was created using d3.js